In the photograph shown to jurors, Princess Diana sits between her two
sisters in the backseat of a car, the three of them doubled over in
laughter. Perhaps you can't remember the joke, the attorney suggests to the
witness, Diana's eldest sister, the Lady Sarah McCorquodale. Aloof and
understated throughout the day's proceedings, she breaks into a naughty
grin: "I'm afraid I can."

Some moments are shared only among sisters. So when Lady Sarah took the
stand at the inquest into the deaths of Princess Diana and Dodi Al Fayed on
Monday, attorneys hoped to unearth some of the secrets that Lady Sarah may
have been privy to  particularly those regarding Diana's relationship with
Dodi and the Royals. She didn't disappoint. She claimed that on August 29,
1997, just two days before the Princess's death, Diana phoned her from the
Al Fayeds's luxury yacht to express her fear that she was under
surveillance. "She thought the boat was being bugged by Mr. Al Fayed
senior," Lady Sarah said.

And what of Diana's relationship with Al Fayed junior? Lady Sarah questioned
its significance and dismissed any talk of engagement and pregnancy. She
could not recall Diana ever mentioning that Dodi gave her gifts  let alone a
big diamond ring. And during the August 29 phone conversation, Lady Sarah
told the inquest, Diana suggested that Dodi was unsympathetic to her
problems. She was "distraught" that the French newspaper Le Monde had
misquoted her on the subject of land mines, making her seem critical of the
government. Lady Sarah suggested that Diana speak to Dodi, but the Princess
snapped that it would be "a waste of time." "From that I just did not think
that the relationship had much longer to go," she testified.

Michael Mansfield, the acid-tongued attorney representing Harrods tycoon
Mohamed Al Fayed, apologized to the Lady in advance for reigniting "painful
memories" and promised to be "careful" with his words. Then he attempted to
dismantle the sisterly bond. Diana, he argued, withheld many of her plans
from Lady Sarah  for instance, that she was assembling information to expose
companies involved in the deployment of mines in areas like Angola, and that
she supplied Andrew Morton with third-party recordings for his tell-all book
Diana. "[Our relationship] was fine," Lady Sarah snapped. "I am not saying it was not fine," Mansfield responded. "I am suggesting to you  'fine' is one
thing, 'close' another." So much for being careful.

Courtesies aside, Mansfield's main goal was to extract from Lady Sarah the
whereabouts of missing letters between Diana and Prince Philip, Diana's
former father-in-law, which he believes could explain Diana's death  or, as
he sees it, murder. Previously in the inquest, Diana's confidant Simone
Simmons, a self-described natural healer and clairvoyant, testified that
Diana had shown her the letters, in which she said Prince Philip described
Diana as a "harlot and trollop." Lady Sarah has denied ever seeing them.
However, a detective investigating Diana's former butler Paul Burrell on
suspicion of theft claims that Lady Sarah told him the letters had been
stored in a mahogany box in Diana's study  a box that she opened and gave to
Burrell. That chest, since returned to Lady Sarah, is now empty  and its
contents missing.

Lady Sarah admits that following Diana's death, she and her mother, Frances
Shand Kydd, shredded "sensitive" documents that might be "distressing" to
Princes Harry and William, including thank-you notes and pamphlets from
"soothsayers." But she maintains that no "historical" documents, such as
correspondence with Prince Philip, were ever shredded: "My conscience is
clear on what I destroyed." Still, prying open the wooden chest  and
potentially unleashing those letters onto the world  may have been akin to
opening Pandora's box. For a mythic figure like Diana, it's a fitting
comparison.